The 8 Of Space

Schneider TMs first release for Editions Mego is somewhat surprisingly a return to the pop abstractions of his output during the 2000s, when his glitch-pop rework of the Smiths There Is a Light That Never Goes Out (with Kpt.Michi.Gan) became an indie hit. While his work throughout the 2010s consisted of improvisations, generative music for installations, and soundtracks, The 8 of Space is similar to albums like Zoomer and Škoda Mluvit, featuring playful lyrics set to a hybrid of acoustic and electronic instrumentation. The lyrics touch on themes of space travel and robot life, told from the perspective of several characters. The vocoderized narrator of the silvery opener Light & Grace is an AI who managed to hack into a commercial spaceship filled with rich evildoers, setting its course for the heart of the sun. The albums title track is a sort of Kraftwerkian Motorhead parody, with Dirk Dresselhaus space-age lyrics bobbing over a jaunty machine rhythm and crackling static interruptions. Oh Life features the albums crunchiest, most shape-shifting beatwork, as the cyborg vocalist celebrates the divinity of being alive, while iBot (with a Soul) is more cynical and dryly humorous, with the machine intoning I run on petrol, electricity, and coal in a deadpan monotone. Even though the album seems to send conflicting messages about the prospect of a technology-dependent future, The Trip (Is the Goal) is a thoroughly optimistic conclusion, calling for humanity to unite and equalize giving and getting. ~ Paul Simpson